Pro Evolution Soccer 2008

The best PES to date - including the PS3 version?

	Version PS3, All	Developer Konami	Publisher Konami	Genre Sports

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Gameplay is the classic fast paced PES action, with individual skills doing as much damage to an opponent's offence as a good build up of passing play amongst the team will do. AI is again improved with this year's outing; players make sensible runs into open space and passing the ball through seems a good deal easier this year. Shooting is also much more forgiving than the last couple of editions, which saw the ball fly over the crossbar if you held down the shoot button for a millisecond too long. In PES 2008, hitting a screaming 40 yard shot into the top left corner isn't too much harder than a tap in from the 5 yard line.

Defence is handled well too, and bookings for particularly vicious tackles are the norm, but you'll never feel unfairly handled by the referee. The first time I saw the dive being used by the computer I was screaming my head off at the ref, only to discover Henry was the man facing the yellow card after some limp limb shenanigans to try and claim a penalty. PES 2008 should be the finest instalment in series yet, and once again it puts realism and engaging gameplay to deliver an experience that only the lack of officially licensed teams detracts from. For PES purists, this is something they're very used to and editing options allow you to update the players and clubs yourself.

So, it looks like PES should be the player's choice again this year for football, however there is a major flaw. The game (on the PS3) suffers slowdown so bad you could consider it broken. This is particularly prevalent when watching replays, but if you have a midfield tussle with more than six players on screen, the game slows down like a Sunday pub game after a heavy Saturday night. I can't even understand how this possible on the PS3, especially as the PS2 and Xbox 360 versions don't suffer the same problem.

The online mode of the game is so lag ridden that even folks playing on Xbox Live will feel like they've got the PS3 version. Konami is working on patches to improve these issues, but their current recommended solution for the PS3 version is to play it with high definition output over an HDMI cable. I was playing through an HDMI cable and still experienced this, so anyone with s PS3 on a standard TV is going to have serious issues with the game, for the time being at least.

Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 really is the best game in the series so far, however Konami has done itself absolutely no favours with the broken PS3 version. I'm also bemused as to why they decided to go with the billboard main menu screen, which bears all the charisma of a burst ball. Graphics could be better, but as I said the player animations are superb and tussles as defenders force attackers off the ball are a shining example of this. Konami has built and refined a superb engine to play the beautiful game on, but some more polish on the presentation and graphics would be appreciated for those of us who moved our much loved PS2's to the cupboard over a year ago.

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